Post-Snowden, time for journalists to get smart

Let's be
clear: Everything journalists do in the digital world is open to scrutiny by
suspicious minds because that's the way intelligence agencies work. If state eavesdroppers
didn't make use of this amazing opportunity they wouldn't be very good at their
job.

Edward
Snowden's revelations about the U.S. National Security Agency's global
monitoring should not come as a big surprise. U.S. agencies have the technology,
the will, and some very loosely written laws that allow them to snoop with
impunity. It was just a matter of time before someone stood up and blew the
whistle.

What Snowden
has told us should serve as a wake-up call for everybody in the news business because
a journalist who cannot offer confidentiality is compromised, and fewer sources
will trust us in the future. But the Internet has come a long way in recent
years. The development of security tools, almost all of which are built by
activist volunteers, can make the digital world a far safer place for
journalists to operate. In this regard, journalists can learn from others who--for different reasons--have learned how to evade electronic surveillance, as I
explain in my new guide, "Deep Web
for Journalists," a project supported by the International Federation of
Journalists.

Here's why
you should care. Start researching sensitive subjects or visiting extremist
websites, and a tracking device could be planted to follow your computer's
activities around the Internet. The tracking technology may involve an
algorithm that could misconstrue your browsing activities and set off alarms inside
intelligence agencies. And if these agencies become interested in you, they
have the ability to monitor your online activities and read your emails. They can
see who your contacts are and they can monitor them, too. Once they sink their
claws in they may never let go.

All journalists
are potential targets. We have contact with politicians and activists, we have our
finger on the pulse and we are capable of causing all kinds of trouble, both to
governments and to corporations. The key is to not draw attention in the first
place, to understand how agencies operate and then figure out multiple ways to circumvent
them because you cannot rely on any single security application or piece of
technology.

In the final
scene of the Hollywood film, "Raiders of the Lost
Ark," the Ark of the Covenant is hidden inside one crate placed among a
humongous warehouse full of identical crates. The scene helps illustrate an
operating principle for journalist. Simply put, if intelligence agencies do not
know where to look for information they are less likely to ever find yours.

It may
surprise some people to learn that there is in fact another Internet, a
parallel and vast digital universe much like the one we know but that is
populated by very different users. The Deep Web, as it is also known, involves hidden
networks allowing people to secretly connect with each other within the broader
Internet.

One way to
find the Deep Web is through the Hidden
Wiki. Its hidden networks are accessed via specifically configured web
browsers that route users through different servers, often in different
nations, to make it all but impossible for anyone to track the original
location or Internet Service Provider address where someone is physically accessing
the Internet including the Deep Web.

The most
widely used such network is Tor, a respectable tool built by Internet freedom volunteers
that is open to use by human rights activists, and also to abuse by criminal
syndicates, predators, terrorists and others.

To enter
Tor, you must first install the Tor/Firefox web browser
to divert your traffic through a worldwide volunteer network of servers. This
conceals your location and your activities, effectively hiding you among all
the other users. Tor works by encrypting and re-encrypting data multiple times
as it passes through successive relays. This way the data cannot be unscrambled
in transit. (Tor is so effective, in fact, that many intelligence agencies now
use it for their own secure communications.)

Now add to
this a range of security tools and you can use Tor to access the conventional
Internet without ever drawing attention. Rather like spies in a James Bond
movie, journalists have an array of digital weapons to call upon to ensure that
their research, correspondence, notes and contacts are secure. Learning the
concepts and tools can take time, but you can access banned websites. You can
continue tweeting when the authorities take down Twitter locally. You can scramble
calls or send emails and messages that cannot be intercepted or read. You can
pass on and store documents away from prying eyes. You might even hide news
footage of a massacre inside a Beatles track on your iPod or smartphone while
you slip across the border.

The Internet
has evolved and so has its counter-surveillance tools. Now we must get smart
and learn how to use them. We must safeguard our devices from intruders; we
should take care that our smartphones are not used as tracking and listening
devices. We need to learn how to stay beneath the radar.

Alan Pearce is a journalist who has reported for outlets including Time, The Sunday Times, Sky News, and the BBC. He is the author of the ebook “Deep Web for Journalists: Comms, Counter-surveillance, Search,” supported by the International Federal of Journalists.

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